Who watches the
Watchmen these days? Well, thanks to HBO’s new spin-off series, probably a few million more than were doing so a few years ago, by which time Zack Snyder's divisive masterwork had begun to fade from recent memory, overshadowed by the MCU juggernaut and
DC’s ill-advised attempts to duplicate it. This revival of interest has led to the long-awaited UK release of the movie’s Ultimate Cut on the new 4K Ultra-HD format, with Zavvi even offering a luxuriant steelbook version for those prepared to invest a little more.
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| Above: The sold-out steelbook edition. Click to enlarge images. |
Even in its theatrical form,
Watchmen is one of my favourite comic-book movies – pretty unsurprisingly, really, given that the
Watchmen graphic novel is generally regarded as one of the medium’s greatest masterworks and Zack Snyder is one of my favourite directors in the genre. Given his penchant for dark and moody interpretations of even the most colourful of comic-book characters,
Watchmen was the ideal fit for Snyder’s subversive style as it came with its cerebral themes and sordid intricacies already in place. All Snyder had to do was stay true to the source material and his own instincts, and the “unfilmable” could finally be filmed.
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| Above: The sold-out steelbook edition. Click to enlarge images. |
The Zavvi-exclusive steelbook is extraordinarily striking – a yellow Rorschach ink blot on black steel is the canvas for a colour-drained montage featuring all the principal players. It may not be as iconic as the smiley-face Blu-ray steelbook, but it’s a considerable improvement on the movie poster version that was issued, and it comes jam-packed full of all manner of trivial treats ranging from a blood-spattered smiley sticker to collectible art cards. The steelbook slots safely inside a protective cardboard slipcase that shares the standard release’s artwork, which itself has been very nicely done, but as was the recent
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald steelbook, the bonus disc is separately housed in a cheap cardboard slipcase of the type you’d generally find bundled with a broadsheet newspaper. The discs themselves are unremarkable too – picture discs seem to be becoming more and more and thing of the past – but of course it's what on them that really counts.
Like many not-quite-recent films,
Watchmen was finished at 2K, which means that its resolution here is only marginally greater than on its 1080p Blu-ray release - the picture has just been upscaled to 2160p. Already abounding with grain, the upscaled image does precious little to enhance what was already a near-perfect presentation. This release doesn’t benefit from a new Atmos or DTS:X soundtrack either - it simply ports over the Blu-ray release’s lossless 5.1 mix. This is not to say that the 4K release isn’t worthwhile, though - the HDR presentation is so drastic as to completely alter the movie’s tone, taking already dark scenes and making them even more atmospheric while allowing the comic book’s deliberately ugly accent colours pop as intended - purples, yellows, magentas and greens appear to be much more vibrant here than on the Blu-ray version from which this article’s screengrabs have been lifted (and which is also included here in the same curious way that DVDs were bundled with Blu-rays for years).
However, I was less concerned with any uptick in technical quality that this release might offer than with the expanded version of the movie itself. One of
Watchmen’s great strengths on the page is the sense of total immersion that it offers - it’s not just a story, but a window into another world; a world with a rich, divergent history that twists everything from the that way war is waged right down to the contents of comic books. Zack Snyder's theatrical cut of
Watchmen did a fantastic job of translating the comic book’s narrative into the movie medium, even improving upon its already jaw-dropping final act by making it much more personal, but where I found it wanting was in its absent asides. The flavour of the world conjured by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons was there, but it was missing its substance. This Ultimate Cut seeks to remedy that, finally putting one of the genre’s most divisive films on the same footing as the graphic novel on which was based.
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| Above: Tales of the Black Freighter, present and correct |
What sets this Ultimate Cut apart from the Director’s Cut released on home video a decade ago is its seamless assimilation of the
Tales of the Black Freighter animation starring Russell Crowe. A dark and impressive piece of work its own right, its inclusion within the main body of the film goes a long way to recapturing the expansive feel of the comic book. Its presence resonates outwards as it draws the audience into the street-level world of Bernard the news vendor and Bernard the comic-book fan while also serving as a grim parallel of Adrian Veidt’s own journey.
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| Above: Under the Hood - missing in action |
At a mammoth two-hundred and fifteen minutes, this cut of
Watchmen is amongst the longest movies that I’ve ever watched, yet I’m still left with the nagging sense that it should have been longer. When
Tales of the Black Freighter was released on home video just prior
Watchmen’s theatrical run, it was paired with
Under the Hood – a forty-minute, faux-documentary that sought to capture the spirit, if not the letter, of the excerpts from the original Nite Owl’s memoir that peppered the pages of the original
Watchmen issues. Snyder quite rightly took the view that dramatising Nite Owl’s accounts would have killed their world-building flavour, and so instead he crafted a spoof magazine show entitled
The Culpepper Minute on which Nite Owl appears to promote the release of his book. The programme’s central chat sees Nite Owl recount several of the passages published in
Watchmen almost verbatim, yet in a manner that doesn’t feel even the slightest bit artificial. Adding colour are brief snippets of interviews with Carla Gugino’s original Silk Spectre and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Comedian that instantly bring to life the events that torn the Minutemen apart.
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| Above: Under the Hood - missing in action |
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| Above: You'll need to hang onto this release for a while yet... |
In my view
Under the Hood is an even more crucial part of the fabric of the
Watchmen than
Tales of the Black Freighter as it deals directly with the rise and fall of the Minutemen and how this alternative world’s history diverged from our own, and it does so through the beautifully subjective accounts of some of those who lived through it. Admittedly, weaving
Under the Hood into the narrative would have been a more challenging task than doing the same for
Tales of the Black Freighter – whereas
Tales’ colour-dense animation serves as a stark contrast to the murky live-action of the main narrative,
Under the Hood is a live-action piece which utilises many of the same players. Yet its period 4:3 aspect ratio instantly distinguishes it from the 2.35:1 main feature, particularly as the footage has carefully been aged in the same way that later prints of the original book used dot patterns to segregate its
Tales of the Black Freighter panels from the main
Watchmen panels. Its exclusion from the Ultimate Cut really reeks of missed opportunity.
Leaving
Under the Hood out of the Ultimate Cut might have been made a little more palatable had it at least been included in this three-disc set, but sadly the bonus material on offer here is limited to the film’s original complement of special features. This means that
Under the Hood is nowhere to be found, nor is the stand-alone cut of
Tales of the Black Freighter or even the enlightening twenty-five minute documentary,
Story Within a Story, which served as a fascinating exploration of both. This release’s “Ultimate” billing also gave me false hope that I might finally be able to get my hands on a full-HD physical copy of the 2008
Watchmen motion comic, but, again, a corner is cut. In many respects, that motion comic is every bit as gripping as this set’s flagship live-action motion picture.
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| Above: The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics |
What has been included, though, is still most impressive. DC and Warner Brothers rarely disappoint in their documentaries, with the depth and quality of their features seeming to increase the more that the focus is turned towards comic books, as opposed to their adaptations.
The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics is a typically comprehensive half-hour retrospective devoted entirely to the creation and reception of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' acclaimed graphic novel. Obviously Moore himself doesn’t appear, but Gibbons shares a number of fascinating insights into their collaboration, and a number of DC executives and those involved with the production of the film are on hand to dissect and celebrate what many still hold up as the greatest comic book of all time.
Real Superheroes: Real Vigilantes is slightly shorter in length, but not substance. Whilst only tangentially linked to
Watchmen, their themes marry quite nicely as this piece also challenges the glamorising of have-a-go heroes, taking a sober look at vigilantism with especial focus on New York's Guardian Angels organisation and a pair of real-life superheroes who are as hilarious as they are worrying. Similarly entertaining is the seventeen-minute
Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World feature in which Professor James Kakalios – an academic who uses nothing but comic books to teach science classes – discusses the believability of the film’s fantastic concepts, using the novel idea of a “miracle exemption” to look beyond a one-off “power” and study how that power might work in the real world. The making of the movie itself is well documented in more than half an hour’s worth of video journals, all eleven of which each take a brief look at a different scene or concept. Rounding out the extras package is the promo video for My Chemical Romance's cover of Bob Dylan’s "Desolation Row” – a track that’s clearly eclipsed by Bob’s own “The Times They Are A-Changin’” that memorably underlines the movie’s opening Minutemen montage.
This may be the Ultimate Cut, but it certainly ain’t the Ultimate Edition – we’d have needed at least two more Blu-ray discs for that. This release gets most things right that matter, but completists like me will inevitably lament what’s missing rather than celebrate what’s here.
The Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut
4K Ultra-HD and Blu-ray set is already becoming difficult to find - the steelbook edition sold out long before the first one was shipped, and even the standard edition is now selling out fast. HMV still have copies in stock priced at £19.99 with free delivery to your local store, while Zoom will charge you a penny more to deliver to your door. Amazon are charging £19.99 plus delivery. However, you can stream (at a lower bitrate) a 4K Ultra-HD version on Apple TV and download a 1080p HD copy to your iTunes library all for just £4.99.
